A clear philosophical choice faces voters in the race for Arizona superintendent of public instruction.

The two candidates agree Arizona's public schools need to be improved, but their ideas on how to accomplish that are very different.

Republican state Sen. John Huppenthal, who has been in the Legislature for 18 years, bills himself as a proponent of school choice and an education reformer, with a history of introducing legislation to shake up the system.

Democratic candidate Penny Kotterman, a former teacher and career educator, promotes herself as someone who understands education, putting her in the better position to improve teaching and learning.

He likes the AIMS test as a graduation requirement. She wants to replace the test with other assessments. He supports tuition tax credits for public and private schools. She does not. His priority for charter schools is expanding the numbers of quality schools. Hers is tightening their regulations to help improve quality.

Whoever gets elected will become state schools superintendent at a challenging time. States across the country are struggling to fund public education amid a tough economy that has caused state tax revenue to plummet. At the same time, a national movement of school reform is driving efforts to make schools and teachers more accountable for getting students to learn.

"Whoever is in that office has an opportunity to really set the tone, lead the legislation for what's going to happen in Arizona. It's a very visible position," said Paul Koehler, director of policy at WestEd, a California-based non-profit organization that works to improve schools.

Running a department

The schools chief's biggest responsibility is running the Arizona Department of Education, a branch of state government that provides services to 1,975 district and charter schools serving more than 1 million students. The department also is charged with making sure schools follow state and federal requirements and serves as the "pass through" agency for federal grants.

"It's one thing to have good policy ideas, but it's also important to really run that department efficiently and make sure the money gets out and the monitoring is done," Koehler said.

The superintendent also is the executive officer of the Arizona State Board of Education, the policy-setting board for public K-12 schools, and has a position on the Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees the three state universities.

Unlike the high-profile races for governor and attorney general, the election campaign for schools chief has been relatively low-key, with the candidates touting their qualifications and their differences from their opponent rather than attacking each other in speeches or ads.

"I respect that," said Fred Solop, chairman of Northern Arizona University's department of politics and international affairs. "This race will be decided on the issues and the quality of the candidates."

Both candidates are taking a grass-roots approach to campaigning, reaching out to voters through yard signs, telephone calls, websites and speaking engagements. The lack of a nonpartisan poll in the race makes it difficult to assess who is ahead. Polls on both Republican and Democratic sides indicate Huppenthal, who is more widely known, in the lead. Democratic Party sources say Democratic polls indicate that as voters get to know Kotterman better, the race becomes a statistical dead heat.

As of mid-September, Huppenthal, who as a Clean Elections candidate gets public funding, had spent $124,784 and had $129,369 on hand. Kotterman, who is raising money the traditional way, from donors, had spent $139,984 and had $19,100 on hand.

Funding schools

Of the two candidates, Huppenthal, 56, provokes the more nervousness among teachers and school administrators who want to see more funding but fear he favors charter schools over district schools.

Huppenthal was the force behind a recent law that will dramatically change the way teachers are evaluated. By the 2012-13 school year, up to 50 percent of teachers' performance reviews will be based on the progress their students show in the classroom, likely measured in part by scores on standardized tests.

Huppenthal also wrote a law that will change the way schools are rated, using letter grades A, B, C, D or F, rather than the current labeling system that gives schools one of six ratings from failing to excelling.

He doesn't support much additional per-student state funding for schools but thinks schools should have the funding they lost in budget cuts restored to 2007 levels and then get annual increases that approach inflation.

Kotterman, 53, has the solid backing of the Arizona Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, which she once headed. Supporters say the fact that she was a classroom teacher and teacher mentor for 18 years gives her a big advantage over her opponent, who has spent 18 consecutive years in the state Legislature.

Kotterman doesn't plan to undo a lot of policies or legislation. But the status quo isn't acceptable, she said. She believes teacher quality is the foundation for student achievement and, if elected, she wants to review the qualifications for teacher licensure in Arizona and provide incentives to attract bright students into education.

"Arizonans don't have any faith in their public schools," she said during a recent televised debate. "We need to return faith to their public schools. It's going to be tough work."

Kotterman believes the state should give schools more money for every student, although she recognizes that Arizona's current economic situation makes that difficult. Here are some of the candidates' thoughts on other education issues.

• AIMS test

Kotterman opposes a single test as a requirement for high-school graduation. She favors students proving their competency for a diploma through a portfolio of exams.

"We'd save a great deal of money if we just disbanded it (the AIMS test) for a couple of years while we were putting together something that's a real measure of academic performance and workplace readiness," she said.

Huppenthal supports having AIMS as a graduation requirement, although the test can be improved, he said. He wants to add questions about U.S. history and the Constitution.

• School choice

Huppenthal is interested in adding to the choices that have increased significantly over the years for parents. He was an early supporter of open enrollment, which allows students to attend schools outside their neighborhood boundaries. He has supported the charter-school movement. Both of his daughters attended a Chandler charter school.

Kotterman believes charter schools should be subject to more stringent regulations and only non-profit entities allowed to operate schools.

• Teacher/school

accountability

Both candidates say schools need a better evaluation system for teachers.

Huppenthal is pushing for more teacher accountability through the new law that will revamp teacher evaluations. He also favors peer review as a part of the evaluation, in which teachers at a school rate each other. He believes this will identify excellent teachers and motivate others.

As part of making schools more accountable, he would push for school districts, and possibly individual schools, to survey parents to find out what percentage believe their school district is providing an excellent education.

"We need a more full-bodied accountability system in our education system," he said. "If you're using test-based models alone, those almost certainly will end in failure. You also need the people aspect."

Kotterman favors the new law and said that, if done right, Arizona's new teacher-evaluation system could put the state on the cutting edge.

Lots of schools have experimented with teacher evaluations based on accountability, and many have failed for a variety of reasons, she said. Properly training evaluators is important to create a system that will encourage and reward progress while providing for the fair dismissal of teachers who consistently fail to meet their goals, she said.

• English learners

The candidates also differ on Arizona's approach to educating children who haven't learned to speak, read or write English.

The state mandates that public schools put those children in a four-hour-a-day course that focuses on English grammar, reading and writing. Students must pass a state exam testing their English skills before they can exit the learning programs. Huppenthal calls the approach a "spectacular success" while Kotterman is skeptical of the state's data that current Superintendent Tom Horne says shows the program is successful. Kotterman said she would review the program.